Step Into My Thimble

The weather here has been nothing short of crazy lately. Between frigid wind-chills and mountains of snow, and fog and rain and tons of melting, and ice everywhere, we don’t know what to expect each day. Today was warmish, maybe 45F, and windy. A good day for packing up the car with a bunch of stuff to donate to the thrift store.

I can’t say I have any significant New Year’s Resolutions this year. Maybe to ease Maeve back out of her current “treaty-treat” fixation that the holidays have brought on. What’s yours?

Have a wonderful Christmas, everyone!

This is totally my practical-Midwestern-slash-German-work-ethic self talking: It is really nice to have Maeve assist us on projects about the home, and not have to secretly re-do her efforts afterward. At least, that was the case with making jam thumbprint cookies yesterday. After they were baked and cooled, she did really well with putting the jam into the thumb-holes too. It was a lot of fun for all.

Being snowed in with very cold wind-chill temperatures yesterday, we turned it into a cookie baking day. On the menu:

• Jam thumbprints
• Almond strips (like marzipan in cookie form)
• Anise seed borrachio cookies (recipe link)

With the oven on anyway, I also made a nice turkey pot pie with leftovers from last Wednesday’s bird. It was a great day to be inside with the kitchen in full functional mode.

What kinds of cookies are you making? What kind do you want to eat?

This year’s holiday mail involved the lovely plain envelopes and cards from Paper Source (always a fave), plus tiny handmade paper snowflakes, also PS paper leftover from Maeve’s first “bird-day” party in 2007. I picked the Latin Jazz stamps because I thought they looked nice on the olive green envelopes. If I have your address you’re probably getting one, but forgive me in advance for what’s in it–I did not have much brain power when I actually wrote the messages.

Time to go home and get ready, we’re expecting major snow in the next 24 hours. Stay cozy.

Tools: Xacto knife, freezer paper, pencil, flat-finish fabric paint in assorted colors, a little sponge, and a plain sweatshirt that needed something to make it more interesting.

The other day I remembered an issue of The Believer a friend had given us a year ago. I am not that much of a McSweeney’s & the like fan so I had shelved it for a while. Turns out in the center of this issue is a neat piece on the carpets in various Vegas casinos. I liked the floral pattern in one of the many pictures in the article.

Inspiration comes from a lot of random places like this for me. Where do your ideas come from?